Fire in the Sky

Social media started buzzing Monday night about a mysterious boom that was reportedly heard and felt by people in communities across Oconee County.

The National Weather Service confirmed it wasn't weather related and the U.S. Geological Survey reported no earthquake activity. FOX Carolina also reached out to the Oconee County Sheriff's Office and Emergency Management but those agencies hadn't received any reports. But the online discussion about what people experienced was still a heated topic on Tuesday.

Teresa Sills tells FOX Carolina, "Last night I was getting ready to go to bed. My husband had already gone to bed and all of a sudden there was a boom sound and the house actually shook and rattled."

After a check around her property, Sills posted a message to an Oconee County Facebook group.

The first reports of Monday night's bright fireball came in between 9 PM and 9:30 PM CST, and it turns out it was high in the atmosphere over South Carolina a little west of Greenville.

Dr. Bill Cooke from NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center captured it on several cameras and tells us this:

'Last night at 9:57 PM Eastern Standard Time (8:57 PM Central), eyewitnesses in the southeastern United States reported seeing a bright meteor, which was also observed by 4 NASA all sky meteor cameras in the region.

The video data enable us to establish that the fireball was first spotted 55 miles above the Oconee Nuclear Station at the south end of Lake Keowee in South Carolina, traveling north of west at 56,000 miles per hour. It completely ablated 17 miles above the Nantahala Woodland Lodge in the mountains of North Carolina. At its brightest, the fireball was as bright as the crescent Moon, indicating it was caused by an asteroidal fragment 3 inches in diameter and weighing roughly one pound. '

Residents of Salvador, the capital of Brazil's northeastern state of Bahia, reported a bright meteor fireball streaking through the night sky around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday 20th February according to A Tarde On Line. Sightings of the event were also recorded in other parts of the region and shared on social media reports Mídia Bahia.

"Has anyone else seen a 'meteor' crossing Pituba now?" asked a Facebook user. "I do not know it was a shooting star, but I just saw a fireball falling from the sky with a huge flash. Did anyone else from Salvador see?" Another on Twitter said "Does anyone explain this glare in the sky of Salvador? And that object falling and catching fire? I do not know what it was, I've never seen anything like it."

Two bright fireballs were recorded streaking through the night sky over Andalusia, southern Spain late February 16 and early February 17, 2018.

The first one flew over Córdoba province at 20:52 UTC on February 16 at a speed of about 43 000 km/h (26 700 mph). It was registered with the detectors of the SMART Project that operate at Calar Alto (Almería), La Sagra (Granada), Sierra Nevada (Granada), La Hita (Toledo) and Sevilla.

Preliminary analysis carried out by Professor María Madiedo of Universidad of Huelva, the principal investigator of SMART Project, the fireball was produced as a consequence of an abrupt entry into our atmosphere of a rock detached from an asteroid.

Comment: Here are some fireball sightings that occurred just in the last two weeks:

Did you see the Valentine's night fireball anywhere in Oregon? Perhaps the Oregon coast?

The American Meteor Society (AMS) and OMSI astronomer Jim Todd are reporting a sizable fiery object plummeting towards Earth about 9:20 p.m. on Wednesday, with reports all over the west coast of the U.S. and as far inland as Wyoming and Illinois.

The best documentation comes from a video taken by KPTV Channel 12 newsman John Hendricks, which is a pretty spectacular four seconds.

Todd compiled reports from various sources and said it was definitely seen from Oregon and SW Washington, including plenty of sightings from Vancouver, Portland, Sherwood, and some from McMinnville and other parts of wine country. It appears that is the farthest west from which reports came, and so far none from the actual Oregon coast.

This is the moment a webcam captured a bright fireball light up the sky over Dawlish before fizzling out.

Dawlish Beach Cam runs a 24-hour live feed from their web cams at Dawlish, and one eagle-eyed viewer spotted the astrological phenomenon.

A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon.

When the object enters the atmosphere, various factors like friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate that energy.